Serenity hath no smile…

Even that vaguely eager stare
Can hardly mask the bars of fear
Behind whose steel beams of experience
Your silent thoughts endure
Their self-imposed sentence.

In those cavernous recesses
Of your luminous thoughts
A resplendent mosaic emerges
A mosaic or sorts –
Dotted with sparks of desire
Chiseled by life’s challenges
Exposing daunting crevices of mistrust
Against brilliant ’scapes of hopeful trust

Trapped in that unrequited past
You passively concede
As your every word stands cast
Against a background of gloom
Like a shrill lingering echo of itself

Trapped in that unrequited past
You bulk at a future of springy bloom
This illusory world whose sandy white shores
You’ve never dared to tread

The sands of your past
Evoke the terror in your present
Clearly audible in you voice
Quivering across your smile

If you were a phoenix
I’d will you to rise from your ashes,
Shake the ashen residue from your feet
And define the tune of your next beat.

But you are not a phoenix
And like me, you are only truly human
Embarking on another experiment
Which would only prove
That which you already know too well…